As seen in Mike Leigh's TOPSY-TURVY, William Schwenk Gilbert and Arthur Seymour Sullivan, the team who wrote and staged world-beloved operettas from TRIAL BY JURY (1875) to THE GONDOLIERS (1889), were in their personal and professional lives . . . well, topsy-turvy.

The pair are presented here a bit like Laurel and Hardy. (In fact, I had forgotten that Hardy's famous, "Now look at the fine mess you've gotten us into," may have its origins among the Retainers of THE MIKADO.) One might think Gilbert, creator of brilliant parodies and puns, was a witty, light and bright Victorian, whilst Sullivan, who constantly wanted to escape Gilbert and compose "serious work," was somewhat dull and frustrated. The opposite seems to have been the case.

Gilbert (Jim Broadbent), if we are to believe TOPSY-TURVY was a depressed, uncertain man, who slogged his way from one project to the next, covering what once was called an inferiority complex with harsh bluster and snappishness. A failed lawyer, in fact, Gilbert wrote and illustrated BAB BALLADS, which with the successful production of a number of popular plays, established his reputation before he formed a partnership with Sullivan (Allan Corduner) under the aegis of Richard D'Oyly Carte (Ron Cook). Puzzled by his unstable former navy surgeon and novelist father, and estranged from his "unconventional" mother, he was kept on an even course by his dutiful wife, daughter of an Indian Army officer, Lucy Agnes, "Kitty" Turner Gilbert (Leslie Manville), though the marriage was childless. Gilbert lived on until 1911, when he drowned trying to save a young woman who had fallen into a lake on his estate.

Sullivan, on the other hand, thought a musical prodigy, rather sickly, was a bon vivant and an optimistic soul, a witty and amusing man, who resorted to brandy and hypodermic stimulants when his energies flagged. He carried on an affair for years with an expatriate American, Mrs Fanny Ronalds, and never married. Despite his ambition and lively spirits, he managed to write only one grand opera, IVANHOE (1891), near the end of his relationship with Gilbert. And he died, relatively young, with the Century.

The film concentrates on the years 1884-85, when Gilbert's silly (sometimes subversive) plots, known as "topsy-turvy stories," (e.g., PRINCESS IDA) were beginning to wear on critics and public alike. Gilbert was in a rut, and as a result, much to the dismay of the Company managers, Sullivan wanted out. He and other disgruntled members were brought back by generously re-negotiated contracts, the promise of a splendid new Savoy Theater (the first public building in the world lit by electricity), but most of all, by a rather different scenario produced by Gilbert after Kitty Gilbert persuaded him to attend a visiting exposition on the culture of Japan. This scenario enchanted Sullivan and became perhaps their best known work: THE MIKADO.

Mike Leigh is noted for his original production methods. He has said that he often writes a final scene, then goes about interviewing actors he feels will fit into that scene. The actors go off for a month or two to ponder and research their parts. If it seems their characters might relate to each other, the actors are encouraged to confer. They construct scenes together and improvise dialogue. Then, Leigh calls them together to find out what they've come up with. Sets are constructed, props gathered, costumes found or made. He shoots the scenes, assembles and edits them to dovetail with the final scene he has in his pocket.

If that method was used here, the film shows the constraints of having to fit into certain facts. Some of his regulars are on hand, Broadbent and Manville, and notably, the sad faced Tim Spall among The Players. With these actors and the others he achieves a wonderful intimacy. He has a genius for the silent reflection, a quick throw away glance. But, too often for my taste, he displays his habitual weakness of holding a shot five or ten seconds too long. Some important scenes -- one that would clearly reconcile, for instance, Sullivan's passion to write serious music with his delight at Gilbert's new inspiration in THE MIKADO -- some of these scenes appear missing. Others, like a lamely concised flash-forward when Gilbert conceives his Japanese notion, strike me stuck in to cover a hole that no one thought to improvise during the original shoot.

Finally, as Leigh has admitted, there is just too much music. In the staging of whole scenes from entertainments like THE SORCERER (1877) and IOLANTHE (1882), both, strictly speaking, outside the timeframe of the events, the forward motion of the film comes to a stop, again and again. The problem, Leigh has stated, was that when he and musical director Carl Davis sat down, they had a hard task -- not what to put in -- but what to take out, they did so love it all.

No doubt, my objections will not concern lovers of the work of Mike Leigh, nor that of Gilbert and Sullivan. And a number of critics call TOPSY-TURVY the best film of the year! Certainly, the music, the performances, period staging, the mis-en-scene, the costumes, the theatrical makeup and the props . . . THE PROPS! All are perfection. The film is particularly good at showing the business and work of theater. (Gilbert and Sullivan were among the first DIRECTORS, as we use the term today.) Still, at two hours and forty minutes, perhaps a few of the numbers might have been trimmed, worked more into the action or handled in montage.

The model for this kind of serious study of of theatrical artists, mixed with known works of art, is Michael Powell's great ballet picture *THE RED SHOES (1948). Based on a true story, Powell and his partner Emereric Pressburger transformed the material into a tightly written, tightly edited film of 133 minutes (long for its time), which manages to sum up the conflicts of artistic and personal life -- and still has time for a full length original ballet and scenes from several masterpieces of the dance repertoire. After you've seen TOPSY-TURVY, rent THE RED SHOES, and see which style you prefer.

Another minor objection might be that Leigh generally deals with the lives of the modern English working and lower middle class. Here, he emphasizes Gilbert and Sullivan, two rather well off members of 19th Century London society, and his attempt to link them with his usual subjects does not always mesh. Although he is properly sympathetic to the plight of lowly players (some of whom suffer from dope and drinking problems, or varicose veins caused by tight corsets), he wanders off on tangents which are illustrative but not germane -- such as a scene in which the Company male leads, before contract negotiations, lunch on bad oysters while discussing the death of "Chinese" Gordon at Khartoum.

This film is the second recently to deal with a famous theatrical event. The other is *CRADLE WILL ROCK. Both are discursive, both tell a number of stories, but the latter, though not as good at the nuts and bolts tedium of creation, left me with a sense of passion and emotion that is curiously muted in TOPSY-TURVY.

Finally, if you are not a fan of THE MIKADO, and (Sir) Arthur Sullivan's music strikes you as distant and unfamiliar, think of "Onward, Christian Soldiers." You may be surprised, after seeing him in a saucy Parisian brothel, that he composed such a crusading religious hymn, too!

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*For my review of THE RED SHOES mentioned above, click on:

http://www.epinions.com/mvie-review-6FFA-8A3D9A5-389B6CC3-prod1

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Recommended: Yes